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For the third year in a row, the Altoona Water Authority will not be raising rates -- after five consecutive years in which customer costs went up.
Customers owed their 2020 reprieve partly to a 2018 rate restructuring, under which a higher percentage of their bills were based on fixed costs like authority wages and a lower percentage on the volume of water they used.
The 2021 and 2022 reprieves came from paying off debt for water projects and higher-than-expected revenues from treating landfill leachate at the Westerly Sewer Plant, according to controller Gina DeRubeis.
The authority stabilized water rates in 2019 by paying off bonds that had required payment of
$5.7 million annually, despite short-term borrowing in 2018 and 2019 of $3 million for capital projects, DeRubeis said.
With major projects ongoing or soon to begin, including ozone system replacement at several water plants and renovation of the Bellwood water plant and its associated dam, the authority will be looking at "long-range rate planning" soon, DeRubeis said.
The authority has held sewer rates steady with the assistance of leachate revenue, which will be about $3 million this year, according to DeRubeis and Todd Musser, director of sewer operations.
That is $1.8 million more than predicted in the 2021 budget.
After subtracting the cost of treating the leachate, the earnings for this year will amount to about $2.3 million.
Recently, it has cost the authority about 1.1 cents per gallon to treat sewer effluent and leachate combination, Musser said.
The authority receives
5 cents per gallon to treat the leachate.
The authority has been successful in attracting leachate customers due to marketing, reaching out to potential customers and accommodations made for those customers, Musser said.
The authority has cultivated good relationships with haulers, especially with its liberal arrival policies.
Some sewer plant operators require haulers to arrive within periods as short as 10 minutes, he said.
If they're late, they may need to wait 24 hours to off-load, he said.
The Westerly customers come from as far north as the counties that border New York state, from as far east as Scranton, from as far south as Cumberland County near Harrisburg and from as far west as Pittsburgh, he said. There's also one out of state landfill.
"Once they find a place they like, it's easy," Musser said.
A lot of the success stems from increasingly stringent regulation of landfills, said authority General Manager Mark Perry.
Leachate is rainwater and snow melt that has percolated through the trash at landfills and been captured by lining and collection systems.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.